That is actually a good point, and I certainly hadn't considered the removal of bats and the Paramonian swingballs. I suppose it's AI behaviour mostly. You know that a slig in the next screen won't hear you talk to a mudokon, and you know exactly what screens constitute a scrab's territory. Could be easily solved with programming, but something in me opposes it. Such peculiar behaviour was weird enough in the originals, but it made a certain amount of intuitive sense. Without those semi-permeable barriers those behaviours would seem even more unnatural.

Okay, when I try to imagine 2.5 HD Abe, I see something that looks like it was made by Twisted Pixel, none of the coloured fogs and mists, high polygon counts, motion and focus blur, depth of field, particle effects and complex lighting that we can be assured will be present in Abe 2.0. I'm just about getting out of it, but an aspect of the Abe games that we rarely consider is that Abe moves about all over the screen, from one corner to the other. In analogue scrollers, the player character is always in the very same patch of the screen as the camera follows, locked onto him. I really think that will be detrimental to the recreation of Oddysee. With flick screen, Abe moves through the world. With scrolling, the world moves around Abe.

That much is true.
Let's not forget however that this is all being done for the sake of marketing. They have the resources at this point to make a whole new game, but they aren't going to do so until they remind the new generation of gamers what Oddworld is. Polishing up their two most acclaimed games from the franchise and putting them on display.
To ensure renewed interest and a fresh crop of fans, they're going to have to choose whats marketable over kitsch value. We're a bunch of stuffy veterans who are used to the original games, but I'm pretty sure that newcomers to the franchise will be downright annoyed with a 2.5D game with flick-screen dynamics.

I don't see how flick-screen can be considered annoying, but maybe that's the rose-tinted glasses speaking.

Try and imagine Little Big Planet with flick-screen and see how much you want to play it.
A sidescrolling environment will full atmospheric fx and interactive background elements is far more enthralling than walking through several linear, static matte paintings. Also, bear in mind that 2.5D is in fact 2.5D because there's a shift in perspective as you move, like a real environment. Would your perspective reset itself with each new screen? That doesn't sound slightly irksome?

But I digress, this is an HD remake of AO, not a complete re-do. Maybe they will keep the flick-screen for the sake of not diverging too far from the source material. It's just that given the state of games today, I don't think 2.5D flick-screen will really fly with anyone who hasn't already played the originals.

Speaking of Little Big Planet:

"So how do you know your done?"

"You don't"

It would be pretty cool if they added new levels to Oddworld like every week or something, IDK.

With clever use of the camera my concerns could be abated. Keeping it stationary until Abe reaches the screen's edge, for example, then following him, and panning to reveal the enemy behind you and the hazards before you during chase sequences.

Why not, allow the player to move the camera within bounds? The problem with non-flick screen is that if it flows, what constitutes when a slig stops chasing you or when you know that a slig won't see you? I think this might have been said before but it's a valid point.

The in-universe explanation is that Sligs have poor eyesight. They could program it so that you have to be within a certain radius to trigger a response.

Unless they had an extensive level-building engine with interchangeable parts and presets, this is highly unlikely (and also kind of pointless).

I'm still wondering if the camera moves everytime Abe does, I wonder if it would be easier or harder for he and Elum to jump the gaps and such. I think I'd rather have it so I see the whole screen first.

Hmm.

I doubt they'd leave any blind jumps. Except maybe two…

I always tried to imagine what Abe's 2D catwalk style world would be like in real life.
Most of your adventure would essentially be extensive tightrope walking.

I imagine that most of those paths wouldn't be straight, with the natural environments meandering more that the industrial paths.

There are already several paths in the original that branch off at a definite angle from an earlier path. Often you can see the path behind or ahead in some of those screens. Sometimes the camera moves on into them. I expect that if they are recreated in the new version those backgrounds will be rendered real-time along with any entities patrolling them.

Anybody think we'll get a brand new strategy guide?

Sure we could use the old one, but one made specifically for the HD version would be nice. In the back it could explain the trophies and such.

Camera solution: have a free moving camera, but add the option to make it static like the original. That probably wouldn't be too hard to implement, and obviously there are strong opinions on both sides. I still think that the flick screens were more of a shortcoming of the original games, and that OWI probably wouldn't have made them by design if the technology was there.

Am I the only one who didn't find them that troubling? It's just a matter of timing... and instead of jumping, run off the edge and hang.

They weren't too problematic or agitating for me either. And I reckon JAW will keep these sections intact, as they have an admiration for tough, retro style games. They might alter it slightly. But I doubt they'll go easy on us with the difficulty. They didn't with Gravity Crash.

I absolutely loathed them when I first played AO, but now I find them... well... not easy, but doable.

I remember the first time I went past that first background Slig in RuptureFarms, I spent about five minutes wondering how it got there.

so its like little big planet sorta?

I also hated the bats and the pendulums. I could live with the pendulums, but the bats... argh. Evil little bastards.

personally, i liked the bats. they were few and far between, like the bees. I didn't really miss them in Exoddus, maybe coz the sloggies made up for their loss.

The bats I don't mind. Their paths become predictable with observation. The pendulum traps on the other hand are a pain. Ostensibly predictable, but with no clear way of telling how close they are. Plus they're buggy and sometimes knock Abe off if he's just sitting there waiting to time a jump. And Abe won't always catch the platform if you run/roll. Argh!

Half the Bats you can just roll underneath anyway.

Another half you can just wait at the side of the screen and go and get a cuppa while they bugger off. Those ones are a real pain. There's no challenge, no timing, just a huge forced pause.

Meh I think 2D with HD sprites may have worked better, we'll have to wait n see..

Has anyone though about how hard 2.5D will make the 'mini world' an achievable alternative perspective, it worked well fixed, having sligs firing at you from distant platforms but I don't think this will be recreated effectively in a 2.5D remake and it would be a significant loss to the franchise.

How do you feel about floating mines? At least there's a logical reason why they would be permanently flying in an angular path.

I never even noticed or thought about the angular paths of the bats until I saw the collision paths in the level editor thread. Their fluttering completely breaks up the straight lines to my eye.

I feel about floating mines about the same as I do bats that follow a repeating path. It's the bats that appear when you enter a screen and stop you from just running past until they've gone off-screen that annoy me, and only in the last couple of years. For a long time I missed the bats.

I'm just looking forward to falling meat carcasses in 3D.

I know a lot of people didn't like the bats (I liked that they were difficult to be honest), but I always found the tricks to catch the player out absolutely hilarious!

Like the part where you chant and the fireflies spell 'watch out for that bat'- but the bat gets closer and closer so if you see the full message it gets you! :D And the one in Exoddus too, with the 'pull lever for assistance', that crushes you with a boulder in Fee Co.

Reason I say is that I always felt this added to the tension, in that I couldn't trust the game! something so routine as chanting becomes threatening, and this was for me a key part of AO/AE- feeling vulnerable constantly. Games in general have gotten a LOT easier in the last few years, I really hope Abe HD remains frustratingly difficult!

Oh also, anyone fancy a trophy for completing the game without dying? (Not even a single time? :D)